Main Engine Cut Off - T+41: EM-1 Follow-up, Dragon 2-Falcon Heavy to the Moon

Episode Date: March 2, 2017

This week is all about #hotdrama, with two surprise media briefings: one from NASA on a potential crewed EM-1, and one from SpaceX on a privately-crewed journey around the Moon—riding on a Dragon 2 and Falcon Heavy—at the end of 2018. I discuss the implications of both, and go on a rant about SpaceX and “focus.” This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 5 executive producers—Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, and one anonymous—and 34 other supporters on Patreon. NASA study to examine crewed SLS/Orion mission in 2019 - SpaceNews.com NASA measuring risks and “significant” cost of crew on maiden SLS launch | Ars Technica SpaceX to Send Privately Crewed Dragon Spacecraft Beyond the Moon Next Year | SpaceX If you think NASA is frustrated with SpaceX, you’re probably right | Ars Technica Email your thoughts and comments to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Subscribe on iTunes, Overcast, or elsewhere Subscribe to Main Engine Cut Off Weekly Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo. A little bit later than I wanted to be coming to you because there I was last week, I was getting out all my gear, setting up the little studio here in my office, getting ready to go, pulling some notes together. There wasn't a lot going on. I thought, let's do some EM1 follow-up. It's a big topic, a lot to digest there. And as I'm getting ready to hit record, I see some tweets rolling in that NASA is going to have this surprise media briefing about putting crew on EM1. So I was like, well, I guess I'll wait. And I'll get a show out early next week to discuss whatever happens on that phone call.

It was kind of a mystery, a surprise event. So I waited, and it was an interesting talk that they had. So I'm thinking, okay, let me pull some notes together over the weekend, and I will get a little early morning session going on Monday. And there I am on Sunday night pulling together my notes, getting things ready. And wouldn't you know it, another tweet rolled in from Elon Musk saying, surprise SpaceX announcement tomorrow, 1 p.m. Pacific.

And I was kind of under the assumption that it wouldn't be relevant to this show. It'll be fun. Maybe I'll do a quick episode to catch up on whatever I missed there. But then I started hearing some rumors that it was spacesuits, it was this, it was that. But there were some rumors and whispers that this wasn't about spacesuits, that this was about something bigger. So I made the executive decision, you know what, I will wait again. I will do this one more day and wait for whatever is announced. And if it's not relevant, then it's okay. I'll do a either Monday night or Tuesday morning episode. But turns out Elon Musk and SpaceX throw quite a big curveball to this whole topic of EM1 lunar missions. So we're going to break this all down. We're going to cover a little

bit of EM1 follow up. And then we're going to break this all down. We're going to cover a little bit of EM1 follow-up, and then we're going to get into the hot drama this week, because this drama is hot. It's hot drama this week. I love it. Elon Musk announced that SpaceX has taken down payments from two people for a flight around the moon, a free return trajectory, in late 2018,

just when NASA is planning on doing the same thing, except for somewhere around a tenth of the cost. So this is a lot to cover, and I'm probably not going to get to it all in this show because there's just so much going on. It's been taking me a few days to kind of pull all my thoughts together here. So I'm going to do my best to cover a lot today. I probably will miss a few things, and we'll have some follow-up in the future on this, and I'm sure a lot of you out there have thoughts as well. So up front, I will say, as always, email me, anthonyatmanagingcutoff.com, if you have any thoughts to share on these topics. I've gotten quite a few emails the past week about

this maneuvering, I would say, on both NASA and SpaceX's part. So if you want to add your voice, anthony at managingcutoff.com. Let's get started on the EM-1 follow-up. The call was with Bill Gerstenmaier, who is the head of human spaceflight, and Bill Hill, who is the head of exploration systems, which is what encompasses SLS and Orion. So two highly ranked officials for NASA taking calls and questions from the press, talking through their ideas on EM-1, this feasibility study that they are underway on. And really just two points came out of this

that I thought is worth a little bit of discussion. The first is that Bill Gerstenmaier, right up front in the call, stressed very heavily that this is a feasibility study. They're coming out of this with a report on whether this plan is feasible. They're not coming out with a recommendation to the administration. They're saying, yes, we can get crew on EM-1. It's going to take this amount of money, that amount of time. They're going to weigh the advantages, the disadvantages of adding crew, what they can accomplish, what they would be missing, what they would be risking. All of that is going to be incorporated, but it's going to weigh the advantages, the disadvantages of adding crew, what they can accomplish, what they would be missing, what they would be risking.

All of that is going to be incorporated, but it's going to be a feasibility study, not a recommendation. Upfront, Bill Hills did say that they did a brief assessment about a month ago and came away with this being in the realm of possibility to get crew onto EM-1 with delays, with additional budget. But it is in the realm of possibility to get crew onto EM-1 with delays, with additional budget, but it is in the realm of possibility to get crew on this flight. Bill Gerstenmaier then said that he is limiting this study to what is possible by the end of 2019, which is about a year out from where the flight is slated for now, and that's going to be his limit, that if they can't do this by the end of 2019, by their assessment now, then they would just scrap it and continue the plan as is currently, which is EM1 in late 2018, but probably middle of 2019, and then EM2 either three or five years after that. Now, they didn't give any hard facts on approximate cost or budget or

anything like that. But Eric Berger of Ars Technica did have a source that said the money that would be needed is about $500 million, and they would need it pretty quick because this flight would be a year or two from now. So they need that money pretty quickly up front. And that would cover, per Eric Berger, the upper stage development that needs to be done to harden it for micrometeoroids and whatever else human rating is applicable to that stage. That would cover the life support system work that needs to be done because Orion was slated to not fly with a life support system for EM-1 since it wasn't going to be needed. And that would cover finalizing the displays that go in the Orion spacecraft, the spacecraft controls, and finishing

work on the launch pad for the crew escape system. That was some of the stuff that Eric Berger said would be included, would be needed for this launch. And that would be about $500 million that is known right now to get early to get this even into the realm of possibility. The other thing that they mentioned that was a new development is that if they do put crew on EM-1, they would push the in-flight abort of Orion to take place before that flight. Originally, that was going to take place after EM-1. Well, originally, originally, it was going to take place before. But as of recently, it was going to take place after EM-1. Well, originally, originally, it was going to take place before. But as of recently,

it was going to take place after EM-1 flew, just because of budget and time constraints and all of that. And that's in-flight abort is going to be flown on top of a Peacekeeper missile, which is the thing that became Minotaur for Orbital ATK. And that will reuse the pressure vessel from EFT-1. They're going to use the same hardware and do an in-flight abort of Orion before crew set foot on the rocket. So if this does happen, if crew does get put on EM-1, they're going to move that in-flight abort up to happen before that flight, which again would bring additional budget because they've got to get Launch Complex 46 refurbished and ready to fire a Peacekeeper missile with an Orion on top. They would need to do the work to get the EFT-1 pressure vessel ready for that in-flight abort. They would have to get the

in-flight abort engine ready, because as far as I remember, the launch abort system on EM-1 was only going to have the jettison motor full, or maybe that was the first flight slated to have an active abort system. Either way, that work will need to be done as well. Now, if you remember last week, if you listened to the show last week, I was talking about EM1. And my big statement of that, my big wrap up was, the question needs to be answered. Not just can we put crew on EM1, but then what? What do we do from there? What does that lead into? Is it a one-off stunt or is it leading into something bigger? And Gerstenmaier

directly addressed that. He said, I'll just read a quick quote here from a Space News article by Jeff Faust. We need to go look at what we really gain by putting crew on this flight. Does this really advance significantly our overall ability to get a capability to take humans routinely as it can be to the vicinity of the moon and operate safely. So he is bringing up in this call specifically that. He needs to answer, then what? Why is this even good for us? Why is this useful to us? If it doesn't change the roadmap overall, is it unnecessary risk? That's my take on it, is if this does not affect the roadmap overall, if EM2 would not be drastically different, if we would all of a sudden have a bunch of stuff to do on EM2, 3, beyond, then it would be worth it.

If it doesn't, if it doesn't change the roadmap at all, then this is really just an unnecessary risk and budget increase and timeline, you know, it screws with the timelines, it does all that, and I don't know that you gain a lot out of it. out of it. The other thing that we heard in follow-up to that initial announcement that NASA was looking into this is that the gap between EM-1 and 2, well actually the gap between flying the ICPS and the exploration upper stage, that is a 33-month gap that really can't be shortened. That gap is going to exist because they have all this groundwork going on to support ICPS. The mobile launcher, the platforms, all of that is due for EM1 to support ICPS, and for EM2 or the EUS flights, that would have to all be reconfigured. And that is a 33-month gap without a significant budget increase. You know, they could obviously put a bunch of money into building a second mobile launcher, but that has already been declared as something that wouldn't be worth it because of the monetary difference there. So unless this report that says we can put crew on EM-1, unless that comes back with an answer that we would put crew on EM-1

and then we would have these follow-on missions and they would all use the ICPS, you're not getting away from that giant gap between EM-1 and 2, which I consider to be one of the most fatal elements of this roadmap overall. Because as I said on last show, think about how quickly this industry is changing right now. How quickly would the industry change in the 33 months between SLS flying EM1 in 2018 or 19 and SLS flying EM2 33 months later? That is a lot of change that will happen there in a very, very pivotal time period. Think of all of the work that would be happening from SpaceX, from Blue Origin, from ULA on Vulcan, from even Orbital ATK on a next generation launch system. There's so much

slated to happen in the next five to 10 years. And that's a giant chunk of time that SLS is kind of stuck, not being able to do a whole lot, not being able to operate a whole lot when everything else in the industry is changing at this rapid pace. And I think a lot of questions would be asked of the program then in that gap that would make it very hard to survive in its current form beyond that anyway. So there's still a lot of open questions for this EM-1 stuff, but hearing about the in-flight abort, hearing about the 33 month gap on EUS, hearing about the fact that NASA is aware that they need to answer the then what question, that is all a good sign. It's good stuff to find out. I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more about this when we get a NASA administrator. We'll hear a bunch more about it. So we'll circle back,

but I did want to follow up with those few items, since it does kind of go back to what I was talking about last week. So now it's time to dive into the hot drama of the week. Of, man, this is the hot drama of the year, maybe. This is really heating things up out there on the Twitters and everywhere else. Everyone is up in a frenzy about this. But before we dive into the SpaceX news, I do want to say thank you so much to all of those out there supporting Main Engine Cutoff on Patreon. And an extra special thank you to the five executive producers of this episode of Main Engine Cutoff. Pat, Matt, George, Brad, and one anonymous executive producer.

They produced this episode of Main Engine Cutoff, and I could not have done it without them. And I am hugely thankful for their support and everyone else's over on Patreon. If you would like to help support the show, head over to patreon.com slash Miko. Give as little as $1 a month. All of your help is a huge, huge boost to me to help me do this every single week. Even when I miss a few days, thank you for putting up with me for that few day hiatus there last week. But your support is giant for me. So I thank you so much for your continued support. So let's dive into it. Elon Musk gets a bunch of reporters on a conference call and tells them that two people have paid for a flight around the moon on Falcon Heavy Dragon 2 in Q4 of 2018. The official SpaceX statement gets posted to the website shortly after with a couple of details that are very important. This flight takes place after the ISS flights are operational,

after the commercial crew flights are operational. Not just the demo flights, once they are operationally flying to the space station, then this flight would happen. That is the biggest, most important detail that needs to be stressed because there are so many people out there criticizing this mission, which is obviously going to be a big chunk of my rant here, based on the fact that Commercial Crew is not flying yet. This mission happens after Commercial Crew. That is said in the SpaceX announcement, and that is the way it is. You know, they're getting Dragon 2 ready for those flights. The first couple are obviously earmarked for those NASA demo missions, but this would be a follow-on to that. The other big things to note is that in the announcement and in the official announcement and in tweets afterwards,

SpaceX and Elon Musk went out of their way to very much talk about the fact that NASA has been the biggest supporter of SpaceX all these years. They have been a key enabler, as they termed it, and they were very thankful and gracious to NASA for their support over time and saying that they could not do this without them. NASA posted an official statement that basically said, we like this mission, we will support you, but also you're working on commercial crew. In that mission, I think that their support was pointed at communications, deep space network, tracking, all that kind of stuff that they would need. I'm very interested to hear more about what NASA would be offering. You know,

we've heard that NASA is going to partner with SpaceX on Red Dragon to get entry, descent, and landing data to put payloads on Red Dragons and to help with the deep space tracking, navigation, all that stuff that they can lend to SpaceX they're going to help out with. I assume that a similar kind of support would be done here with this mission, maybe not as heavily, since it's not going to be such a big program overall. This is kind of a one-off demo mission that is paid for by private citizens. But I'm very interested in what level of support this would be from NASA. Obviously, there's space in the trunk of the Dragon, so NASA could put some payloads there and be able to slap a NASA decal up on the side of that Dragon 2 and

say that this is a NASA mission. It's taking off from 39A on top of Falcon Heavy. So it's Kennedy Space Center mission. This is flying from the hallowed ground of 39A. So NASA's Kennedy Space Center mission, you know, this flying from the hollowed ground of 39A. So NASA, you know, they can claim a lot of success from this mission because the commercial crew program, commercial cargo and crew, all these commercial programs, part of the motivation was to spur this kind of development, to spur a company to develop capabilities that they would not have been able to otherwise. So for the people in NASA and outside of NASA that support these commercial programs, this is a success story of that.

But that's where we get into the hot drama. Because all of that is the cordial stuff that we have to get out of the way, that this mission is going to be great, it's going to be after the NASA missions, we like NASA, we love NASA, NASA's going to support us, NASA, NASA, NASA. But the hot drama comes in, in the response to this. And there's what I have assessed, two main lines of criticism sort of feeding into each other. The first is that SpaceX should be heavily, heavily focused on commercial crew, and they currently aren't. And that either means

solely focused or just a majority of their focus going to commercial crew. That is the first criticism, that SpaceX is not focused on what NASA is paying them for. The second is that they're stepping on NASA's toes during a week in which NASA is very vulnerable. NASA, in this case, meaning the SLS Orion program, they're obviously trying to figure out this EM-1 stuff like we've just talked about they're in a vulnerable position right now in transition that there's a lot of stuff at play everything's kind of thrown up in the air with this transition going on and Elon Musk is out here stepping on toes telling everybody that we're flying these two people to the moon just like EM-1 is slated to do now I think partially the feelings of the first criticism are what creates the second piece of criticism. So let's dive in. We're going to, you know, again, there's so much to unpack here

that I'm going to do my best. I'll probably miss something and come back to it, but let's dive in up front with the idea of focus. Now, I've been discussing this a lot with people the last couple days on Twitter and elsewhere about, is SpaceX focused to the degree that they should be on Commercial Crew? And a lot of people are coming at this that they are not focused enough on Commercial Crew because Commercial Crew is late, and if they were more focused, it would be on time. If they weren't distracted by these other missions, these recoverable cores, this Red Dragon, all this ITS stuff, Raptor engines, if they weren't distracted by all of these projects,

commercial crew would already be flying. Now, there's a few pieces of that criticism that I would like to take right off the top. Number one is, what the hell's Boeing distracted on? If we're going to say that SpaceX is distracted by these other projects, and that is what caused the commercial crew delays, what the hell is Boeing distracted on? They're just as delayed as SpaceX, maybe a few months difference.

But overall, we're looking at the same delay here on commercial crew. The other thing is that commercial crew as a program has been delayed. The GAO reports did not lay off of NASA. reports did not lay off of NASA. They obviously put some of this at the feet of NASA in terms of program management, how they've been doing responding to these different companies, the requirements they've been putting on them. That's an old argument that's already been fought and kind of settled in a lot of cases with that GAO report. But the idea that SpaceX is working on these other projects and that directly has delayed Dragon 2, I do not understand one bit. We don't have enough insight to SpaceX to say whether or not that is true. And in the cases of

certain journalists like Eric Berger, who has these NASA sources that are not named, that he has said, you know, from his NASA sources, they feel like the focus is not there from SpaceX. from his NASA sources, they feel like the focus is not there from SpaceX. And I've pressed him on this a little bit on Twitter and other people have as well. And I'm waiting to hear an answer on this. But until these unnamed NASA sources, not just Eric Berger, it's others as well out there that have sources within NASA that give them quotes about being frustrated at the level of focus that SpaceX has shown to commercial crew when NASA has bent over backwards to support them, which I will take issue with as well. But until these unnamed sources start giving me details on how they tracked this focus, what is it within SpaceX that they want to see changed?

Is it a workforce management issue? Are there not enough people working on Dragon 2 and that's what would speed it up? Are people being pulled off of Dragon 2 to go work on things like Falcon 9 recovery and the minutiae of that? Are there people that are working on the grid fins of Falcon 9 that have been pulled off of Dragon 2 and that directly caused a delay? Or is it this general feeling that because SpaceX has so many different projects, some of which seem very advanced, and Dragon 2 is still behind schedule, that it's anything more devious than mismanagement

within the Dragon 2 program. Because a lot of this is a general feeling that you're getting from these NASA sources, that SpaceX as a whole is mismanaged, and they're not putting the appropriate amount of resources, be it time, money, budget, people, workforce issues, anything like that, they're not putting the appropriate amount of those resources into the Dragon 2 side, and they're putting too much on the recoverable Falcon side. None of that is backed up with really anything. These are

unnamed sources. You don't need to bring me a signed report, but dive into it a little bit. Tell me they have this amount of people working on Dragon 2 and this amount working on recovering Falcon 9's composites and all that kind of stuff. Because I don't buy that there's this amount of overlap between these different teams that a minute spent working on the grid fins of Falcon 9,

a minute spent working on the composites of ITS, is a minute lost on the development of Dragon 2. I don't buy that because SpaceX is the only company in which that criticism is levied. Was ULA partially responsible for the delay in Starliner because they have a small team of people working on Vulcan when Atlas V needed this work for this Aero skirt on which Starliner would fly? No, that's a ridiculous statement. It's fine that ULA has a small part of their team working on Vulcan because they have people working on Atlas as well, and those people did the work to build the Aero skirt for Centaur. If Boeing needed additional work, if their avionics for Starliner were behind schedule, are they going to go and extract people from the 777 program that are

working on avionics to work on Starliner? No, these are different teams with different priorities at different stages of development. These are distinctly different teams. But for some reason, SpaceX is the only company that I hear regularly attacked in this way that's saying that, well, these resources that are being spent on Falcon 9 recovery or Faring recovery or Raptor engine development are directly applicable to Dragon 2 and therefore directly accountable for the delays that we're seeing in Dragon 2. You can take issue with the way that SpaceX has managed the Dragon 2 project. Certainly, it's behind schedule.

Now, you have to map that up to what is the program doing overall and what are the overall forces at play there and how has SpaceX mismanaged the program within that context. But I'm not sure that from the outside looking in, that you're able to say they're mismanaging their resources in such a way that work on the Raptor engine has directly been attributed to a delay in Dragon 2. I think that is not a responsible argument to make if you don't have insight into SpaceX. And if you do have insight into SpaceX, and you are giving quotes to a journalist as an unnamed source from NASA, bring your receipts. Show me that data. Don't give me a general feeling

that you're not getting the focus you deserve from SpaceX. I even saw somebody that works within NASA say that the sole focus of SpaceX should be commercial crew flights. For some reason, that left out entirely the fact that SpaceX is currently delivering cargo to the International Space Station. There's a Dragon in orbit right now attached to the International Space Station that just brought a bunch of cargo up there. Should they drop that because Dragon 2 is behind schedule? Should they lay off a bunch of their workforce that has worked on Falcon 9 in the past because Dragon 2 is behind schedule? The team that was working on Rocket Engines, they built Merlins, they built Dracos, they built Super Dracos. They retired a bunch of

development work on the Rocket Engines, and they've moved on part of their team to Raptor. There's a part of their team still working on the production of Merlin engines, the integration of Merlin engines, the testing, the upkeep, and a part of the team moved on to development for Raptor. Should those people be let go because Dragon 2 is delayed? Or should they continue working on the future of SpaceX? And that's a general theme here. These are different projects, different teams, different priorities, different stages of development, and SpaceX is a big company. They are able to multitask. Maybe they are not managing their multitasking as good as they should be.

They obviously have made mistakes that have put these projects behind schedule. But to say that they should disband these other projects or they should stop working on these other projects because Dragon 2 is late is not a responsible response to this. And that also gets into another fallacy that, you know, you're talking about peoples and resource management and all that. And maybe the Dragon 2 delays, which we don't know much about, we don't know outside of the GAO reports what it is exactly that is delaying Dragon 2 so far. People inside the company do that, but we from the outside, and even some NASA sources, don't know that detail. And it might not be that more people will make that project move faster.

In the software world, where I spend my day job and all my other time that I'm not reading about spaceflight, and the world in which Elon Musk came from, made his money in, in which a lot of the ethos of SpaceX are born in. There's this famous book, The Mythical Man Hour, in which it's shown that adding more people to a already behind schedule project does not always make it speed up and oftentimes, if not always, slows it down significantly. The famous quote is that nine women can't make a baby in one month. You know, sometimes adding more people isn't what a project needs. Is Dragon 2 at that point? Are we looking at a bottleneck with Dragon 2 that more people would help? Or is it something else within the program, in which case the people and the hours spent on the project aren't the thing that

we need to beat here? Now, these are hard things to assess from the outside. But if you're an unnamed source willing to go on record and say that you're not getting the focus you need from SpaceX, put some more detail into it rather than a vague feeling. Because SpaceX is an independent company. And you can go look at that financial statement from the Wall Street Journal. They get a significant portion of funding from NASA, but that's not all of it. Should they stop flying commercial payloads until Dragon 2 is up and running? Should they stop flying expendable boosters until Dragon 2 is running? Should they stop recovering boosters

until Dragon 2 is flying? Where do you draw the line? This seems very arbitrary from the outside. And if you are a source closer to them, then maybe you can draw that line better, but tell us about it. But sitting here from the outside and saying, this is worth their time,

that's not relevant to Dragon 2, this is relevant to Dragon 2, that's not, that's arbitrary to draw from the outside and saying, this is worth their time, that's not relevant to Dragon 2, this is relevant to Dragon 2, that's not. That's arbitrary to draw from the outside, and I just think it's not responsible to do that. So the other part of this is that certain projects are classed as a distraction from what their work is, which is getting crew flying to the ISS. Red Dragon was very much classed that way, and in some cases, I understand, it uses the same mold line, it uses the same pressure vessel, but there would be a lot of modifications to Red Dragon overall. There would be a lot of structural changes. There's a lot of work to be done on Red Dragon, but it was always made clear that Red Dragon would fly after Dragon 2 is up and flying to the ISS. And now Red Dragon has officially been delayed to

the 2020 window. We always knew that 2018 was a best case scenario launch window and that 2020 was more likely. So it was seen that Red Dragon was a distraction from flying crew to the ISS. And it was seen that ITS was a distraction from flying crew to the ISS. And those things are valid arguments. You can make the argument that projects of that scale tend to distract an organization. But this mission is a direct follow-on to commercial crew. But this mission is a direct follow-on to Commercial Crew. It's the same hardware that is going to be used for Commercial Crew flights to the ISS,

and it was made clear that this flight happens after ISS flights are underway. So in almost every way, this is an infusion of cash and focus to Commercial Crew. If anything, the jump from Falcon Heavy flying and Dragon 2 flying to this mission is much less than getting those two things flying in the first place. So with all of that said, I think that general feeling of a lack of focus, the angst there is more of the angst that has always been there for SpaceX. The angst is that they are coming into an industry that was set in its ways, and as much as I hate the term, disrupting it. And with that comes a lot of angst, and that's how it always is. When you come into an industry and change the way things work,

and gather all the excitement, and suck up all the attention, the people that have been there longer get really PO'd. And that has always been the case with SpaceX. In the early days, it was cute. They were flying Falcon 1, they were flying Falcon 9. But when they started landing rockets back on a ship at sea, when they started bringing first stages back to land, when they started doing these things, the tensions ratcheted up a bit. And when they announced Red Dragon and ITS, the tensions ratcheted up a bit. But when they announced this mission, it hit a new level. Because this mission is close. It's very real. You can sense that it's close and ready to be done, it's as far away as most NASA missions you hear about. Red Dragon ITS was a little bit farther

out, kind of theoretical, hard for some people to visualize. But when you show something like this to the public, and it's so close, and it matches what NASA is working on right now, those tensions really, really bubble over. And in the past, the tensions about SpaceX being fast and loose with safety, and they've had these two anomalies, and all of the stuff that you've heard criticized about SpaceX over and over again, that seems to be the source of a lot of this criticism today, but it's just ratcheted up because it's a very sensitive time for NASA and the entrenched interests that go along with all that. So I think that general feeling of focus and lack of focus is sourced from that same place of angst about the way that SpaceX has come into the industry and changed things.

So on that note, let's get into why make this announcement now if you're SpaceX. Because I think this announcement was slated to be done after Falcon Heavy flies. We've got hardware in Texas for Falcon Heavy demo flight. We've got hardware making its way across the U.S. for this mission mission. I think this announcement was supposed to come after that Falcon Heavy mission. I don't think they were ready to do this yet. It seemed pretty rushed. It didn't seem like a typical coordinated SpaceX announcement with fancy graphics and maybe even a webcast and all that kind of stuff. It was a surprise day before conference call sort of thing. So I don't think they were ready to

make that announcement. I think it was slated for after Falcon Heavy. Because this announcement plays much better after Falcon Heavy. This announcement plays even better after Dragon 2 flies. But after a week of EM1 debate, after the transition team asked NASA to assess whether they can put crew on EM1. After the turbulent week in NASA world, I think SpaceX and Elon Musk smelled an opportunity. Because from the people I know at SpaceX that I've talked to and people that I've seen on the internet writing things anonymously or not, there's a feeling that the NASA Exploration Club is an insider's club that's hard to break into, if not impossible to break into. And that's not always NASA's doing. A lot of it's Congress's

doing, that they mandated that they had to use the shuttle contractors and they couldn't really compete for these contracts. But the Boeings and Lockheeds and Orbal ATKs, the Aerojet Rocket Dynes specifically, that's an old insiders club. So if there's this turbulent nature of things right now, if some people within an administration are asking these probing questions of the space program, of the current way that the contractors are working, of the current plans for exploration, if all these questions are being asked, then NASA's being put in the spot in a lot of ways, and Congress in more ways is being put in the spot. And you have this mission booked,

because this has probably been in the works for a couple of months. Don't think this came about last week and SpaceX went ahead and announced it the beginning of the next week. I think this has been in the works for a little while. So if you see all these questions being asked of NASA, works for a little while. So if you see all these questions being asked of NASA, this could be your opportunity to step up and make a statement that you are in this exploration game as well. That you should be considered as part of this exploration game. Because so far in the history of SpaceX, that has not been possible. It has not been possible for them to stick their foot in this old insider's club that is the NASA Exploration Roadmap and say, we're here too, let's get a piece of it. And if you as SpaceX have been working your strategy

to head in this direction for a decade, if you've been strategically working towards winning NASA contracts that get you closer to your goal, and you're finally there, you're finally ready to fly this kind of flight, and then you see NASA being asked to fly a similar one that you're working on for the same time frame, why not put your name out there and say, guess what? We've got one of those booked, and we're doing it too. And if NASA wants to buy a flight like this, we will fly them before the Taurus, because that's something else that Elon said. If NASA wants a flight on Falcon Heavy Dragon 2 around the moon

before these Taurus go, we'll do it. Because this old insider's club that is the NASA exploration roadmap and the contractors within, they're not going to invite SpaceX in without SpaceX pushing their nose through the door. Aerojet Rocketdyne is not going to go to their representatives at Congress and say, hey, those folks over at SpaceX, they built some pretty good engines. Why don't we get them in this program? We think it can do better. Lockheed Martin's not going to go down to their Congress members and say,

hey, SpaceX has built some pretty cool looking capsules maybe we can get them in here to help us build something for this roadmap that's not going to happen, no one's going to invite SpaceX in they need to push their way in to this club they need to disrupt that club somehow so I absolutely understand the frustration if you are from one of those contractors or if you're from within NASA on the side of NASA that is with these old contractors

that doesn't necessarily agree with the way SpaceX does everything. I understand being frustrated with the way SpaceX is playing their cards here after NASA has, quote, bent over backwards for SpaceX. Now, I dispute that because I ranted about this two weeks ago on the podcast. It's not like NASA swept in on a cloud and said, here you go, Elon, have a billion dollars to save your company because we are just that nice and we think you deserve saving. SpaceX worked to put themselves in a position in which they could win a contract from NASA.

It wasn't out of the goodness of someone's heart that SpaceX won that contract. They worked to get themselves to that position. And SpaceX's strategy has been to get the contracts that are relevant to their mission, to their end goal. And through that, they've put themselves in a position when two people can come to them and say, we want to flight around the moon, and they say, we can do that for you, because they've worked the contracts that they have, the work that they have going,

the roadmap that they've laid out for themselves, they've worked that to get to this point. Politics is not nice. Politics is not nice. I think that we've seen that over the last year, and if you're SpaceX, and you've got this card to play, why don't you play it at a moment of turmoil that comes once every 15 years? That's how often this kind of thing comes.

We can say that it happened with the beginning of the Obama administration, but honestly, what changed? Other than the fact that it became a rocket and a capsule instead of a full exploration plan. This happens once every 15 years. So if SpaceX wants to get a piece of that action, if they want to be considered part of the exploration roadmap, now's the time to play their card. And I don't buy this whole thing that NASA paid them money to operate in LEO so that's where they should stay. Because from day one, SpaceX has made clear that that's not where they're going to stop. They've made clear that their mission is beyond low Earth orbit. So don't act like NASA gave them this money without understanding SpaceX's true ambition.

this money without understanding SpaceX's true ambition. Their commercial programs, part of their motivation was to develop companies that had this ambition so that an industry may flourish. It wasn't to restrict these companies to Leo, because that's been the trope that, oh, we're handing Leo over to the commercial companies so that we can take beyond Leo. And now SpaceX, having that ambition to go beyond LEO as well, is doing it. And that's ruffling feathers, obviously. I understand the frustration. But this day was always coming. SpaceX was always heading in this direction. And NASA's roadmap, that's been an absolute mess, was never going to be prepared for this. mess was never going to be prepared for this. So even if SpaceX doesn't actually get a piece of their exploration budget, get included in these plans, they are going to have an effect on it.

Just like the fact that they haven't reflown a Falcon 9 yet is having an effect on the industry at large because they're doing it cheaper. They are recovering these things, they keep knocking down milestone after milestone that people have said, well, it's fine, but they haven't done X yet. Okay, they've done X. Well, it's fine, but they haven't done Y yet.

So simply asserting your existence as SpaceX here, that'll shake things up. And maybe it's not going to be right now. Maybe this is going to just come and go, but that seed is planted. And maybe it's not this administration that eventually says, why are we spending so much money on these programs

when these companies are doing it for cheaper? Maybe it's not this administration. Maybe it is. But that was never going to happen unless SpaceX stuck their nose in where it shouldn't have been. So yes, that's going to ruffle feathers, and that's going to make things uncomfortable for some parties in the industry. But that's the only way that any of this changes. And if you don't want any change to come to a piece of the industry,

maybe that just means that you're scared of what that change would bring or whatever your vested interests are. Now, you clearly understand what side of this argument that I'm on, and I understand there are people on the other side of the argument, but this day was always coming. SpaceX has had this ambition. They've been working towards these capabilities. This day was always

coming. And I don't see the old contractors club and parts of NASA that disagree with the way SpaceX does it. They haven't prepared themselves for this day. So is it opportunistic from SpaceX? Absolutely. They're looking out for them, a private company, an independent company, they're looking out for them a private company an independent company with a mission statement nasa needs to do the same for themselves every other company in the industry has to do the same for themselves that's the way it is and that is why this era of spaceflight is so exciting because there are these wild cards there are things that are somewhat unpredictable that change the the calculus overall. SpaceX is playing a pretty big card here.

I'm not going to call it a trump card. That would be a little much, but they're playing their cards there that they have built up. And I think it's a good thing. And I think it will only benefit the industry overall. There are going to be people that are hurt by this. There are going to be people that are a little cranky about this happening. But it was going to happen. It needs to happen. And I'm excited to see where it goes from here. Thank you very much for listening, and I'll talk to you next week. Thank you.